ODA: Viewed from the standpoint of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, you could think of the past as being not a single thread but—
HATCHER: A quipu, yes, we’ve been over that.
ODA: When the quipu becomes sufficiently vast, it becomes instructive to transition, in our thinking, to a different mode, a continuous as opposed to discrete model, in which all of the threads effectively merge into a block of stuff that I am likening to Jell-O. When we send DOers back in time to carry out DEDEs, it’s like tapping the Jell-O with a spoon and making it jiggle a little bit. It creates internal stresses that the material is capable of withstanding. But if we try to change too much, too fast—
HATCHER: It cracks?
ODA: Yes.
HATCHER: It just splits wide open.
ODA: Just for a moment. But unlike a Jell-O dessert on your plate, the space-time continuum cannot simply fall apart. It is self-healing. The cracks must be sealed immediately. If you are far away from the crack, then you are safe—it’s like being far away from an earthquake. But if you are unlucky enough to be right along the crack boundary, then you are in for a bad time. The universe needs to decide whether you are going to go on existing or not.
HATCHER: You’re referring here to the so-called Tearsheet Brewery. What happened in that scenario?
ODA: You might think of the Tearsheet Brewery as like a lettuce leaf embedded in a Jell-O molded salad. Because of the unfortunate chain of events, this piece of lettuce was yanked out of the Jell-O and ceased to exist. A vacancy was left in its wake, which self-healed with the most terrible consequences for those unlucky enough to be near it.
HATCHER: Terrible consequences, indeed. Thank you, Dr. Oda. Madame Chair, I yield my time.
CHAIRMAN ATKINSON: Are there any further questions for Dr. Oda at this time? No? Very well, you may step down, Dr. Oda.
SENATOR COLE: Madame Chair, in light of Dr. Oda’s remarks I would like to call Lieutenant Colonel Lyons back.
[REDACTED]
SENATOR COLE: . . . the descriptions of the Tearsheet Brewery event are, in sum, so bloodcurdling, and the benefits of this mission so trivial in comparison—the recovery of an old book from a cask in Dr. Oda’s backyard!—that it must call into question why we are being asked to spend the taxpayers’ money on this sort of undertaking at any level, to say nothing of the exorbitant requests embodied in this proposed budget.
CHAIRWOMAN ATKINSON: I would like to thank my distinguished colleague for that impassioned, eloquent, and thorough statement. Was there a question for Lieutenant Colonel Lyons?
COLE: Why should we spend the taxpayers’ money on building a device that will only expose this great nation to additional risk?
LIEUTENANT COLONEL LYONS: Thank you, Senator Cole. For high-level strategic questions I might refer you to General Frink, but I’m happy to address your question on a more nuts-and-bolts level. As you point out, we need to keep the costs as low as possible while minimizing risk and maximizing benefits. From a cost point of view, I’ll remind the committee that the only work being actively funded right now, and for the next few months, is CRONE: Chronodynamic Research for Optimizing Next Engagement. We have cut back the number of DEDEs to the bare minimum needed to sustain progress and we have limited those to missions of an exploratory or experimental nature. Most of our current budget is devoted to pathfinding work on the Chronotron, a device whose entire purpose will be to minimize risk.
COLE: To minimize risk, you say.
LYONS: Yes, Senator. That is its purpose.
COLE: Both Dr. Oda and General Frink in their earlier testimony praised the Chronotron as a tool that would enable DODO to plan future missions. Would you concur?
LYONS: Yes, it duplicates the functionality of the quipus or other similar devices used by witches to navigate the different Strands of history, and combines that with a colossal database of historical facts. If we’d had it earlier, we’d have planned our first DEDEs differently and gotten results more quickly and more safely.
COLE: Or perhaps chosen some different DEDE altogether?
LYONS: Yes, it’s quite possible that with a functioning Chronotron we might have been able to identify something both easier and more profitable than recovering a Bay Psalm Book.
COLE: This is precisely what concerns me about building the Chronotron.
LYONS: I’m sorry, Senator Cole. Why would you be concerned about DODO having a tool that would enable us to make more informed choices? As opposed to just winging it?
COLE: When you just wing it, you are aware of the risk and the uncertainty, and inclined to be more cautious. When you have a high-tech tool giving you an illusion of omniscience, I am concerned that it will lead to greater risk-taking.
LYONS: I would argue that more information is always better. I would make an analogy to using computers to predict the weather. Back in the days when all we had was a weathervane and a barometer, a ship’s captain had to make his best judgment about what the weather was going to do, and trust his gut. Now that we have weather satellites and computerized forecasts, the captain can make informed decisions.
COLE: It is an attractive analogy, but it’s self-serving, since we all know that those satellites and computers actually work most of the time. You’re likening the Chronotron to familiar technology that we trust. How close is the Chronotron, really, to deserving that trust?
LYONS: As of today, about halfway through the CRONE phase, we have the individual processing units—the QUIPUs, or Quantum Information Processing Units—running according to spec, and we’re developing the manufacturing capability to produce them in larger numbers. By linking just a few of them together we’ve been able to achieve more accurate results than the quipu-like item Erszebet was using—
ERSZEBET KARPATHY: My számológép, which has now been lost because of the incompetencies and manipulations of this government.
ATKINSON: Ms. Karpathy, you are out of order.
COLE: Yes, thank you, Ms. Karpathy, we have already noted your remarks on this topic several times.
KARPATHY: My comments have not yielded results.
ATKINSON: Order! Order!
[REDACTED]
(NEXT DAY)
SENATOR EFFINGHAM: . . . moving on to Line 539 of the proposed budget, unless my eyes deceive me, you wish to allocate twelve full-time positions to historians?